In re­sponse to con­cerns about the need for clean, fresh wa­ter in the Caribbean, which has be­come even more crit­i­cal fol­low­ing the re­cent pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Tomas, Roy­al Bank of Cana­da (RBC) has an­nounced that the month of De­cem­ber will be ob­served, across the Caribbean, as Wa­ter Aware­ness Month.

The bank has pledged a con­tri­bu­tion of CAD$50,000 to the Red Cross, to as­sist with wa­ter san­i­ta­tion ac­tiv­i­ties in the is­lands im­pact­ed by Tomas. "We have a long-stand­ing tra­di­tion of re­spond­ing when com­mu­ni­ties are in need, and we are proud to sup­port this ini­tia­tive," said Suresh Sookoo, CEO of RBC's Caribbean Bank­ing di­vi­sion.

"RBC will con­tin­ue to re­view op­por­tu­ni­ties to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for wa­ter-re­lat­ed projects in the Caribbean, through our Blue Wa­ter Project". The RBC Blue Wa­ter Project is a ten-year, $50 mil­lion phil­an­thropic com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions that pro­tect wa­ter­sheds and en­sure ac­cess to clean drink­ing wa­ter.

Since 2007, more than CAD$27 mil­lion has been pledged to 350 projects around the world, and more than $1 mil­lion dol­lars has been do­nat­ed to ini­tia­tives in the Caribbean. Dur­ing the month of De­cem­ber, RBC will al­so dis­trib­ute wall cal­en­dars across the Caribbean to pro­mote re­spon­si­ble wa­ter us­age among their clients and em­ploy­ees through­out the re­gion.

Themed Cre­ate a Blue Wa­ter Fu­ture, the cal­en­dars cou­ple vivid im­agery, with sim­ple tips for help­ing us to all use wa­ter wise­ly, and im­prove the re­gion's over­all wa­ter ef­fi­cien­cy.